Neural Basis of Visual Perception and Cognition

Izumi Ohzawa (Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences and School of Engineering Science)
Ichiro Fujita (Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences and School of Engineering Science)
Satoru Kawamura (Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences and School of Science)
Fujio Murakami (Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences and School of Engineering Science)
Tetsuya Yagi (Graduate School of Engineering)
Nobuhiko Yamamoto (Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences and School of Engineering Science)

Summary
   Unless one is handicapped visually, vision comes very naturally and effortlessly to everyone. Behind the scenes, however, visual perception is achieved by intricate and concerted interactions of many parts of our brain. The objective of this course is to learn how our own visual system really works. How is light converted into neural signals? Where do billons of neurons come from and get wired up correctly? What do those individual neurons tell other neurons to allow us to see, move around, find food and mates, and avoid bad things from happening? In this course, we will attempt to answer these questions and learn current understanding of how the visual brain works.

Course Outline:
   1: Introduction: What does it take to see? (Fujita)
   2: Photoreceptors: How sensitive and how fast is the retina? (Kawamura)
   3: Visual acuity and anatomy of the eye: How much information do the eyes process? (Ohzawa)
   4: Physiology and morphology of nerve cells (Murakami)
   5: Genesis of visual system (Murakami)
   6: Wiring the brain: How do neurons make the right connections? (Yamamoto)
   7: Color (Ohzawa)
   8: The first-stage neurons of the visual cortex: what do they tell the rest of the brain? (Ohzawa)
   9: How does the brain analyze visual motion? (Ohzawa)
   10: Stereoscopic depth perception: make your own random-dot stereograms (Ohzawa)
   11: Neuromorphic artificial vision systems (Yagi)
   12: Organization of high-order visual brain (Fujita)
   13: Visual memory (Fujita)

Textbooks
   None. Handouts will be distributed in classes or provided on-line.

Grading
   Attendance 30%, quizzes and term paper 70%